The race to bring quantum teleportation to your world
October 5, 2012
Schematic of quantum teleportation beaming particles from a satellite to two ground stations (credit: IQOQI Vienna)
Around the world, countries are investing time and millions of dollars into the technology, which uses satellites to beam bits of quantum information down from the sky and and could profoundly change worldwide communication, Wired Science reports.
In the past year, a team from China and another in Austria set new records for quantum teleportation, using a laser to beam photons through the open air over 60 and 89 miles, respectively.
If developed, quantum teleportation satellites could allow spies to pass large amounts of information back and forth or create unhackable codes.
Should we ever build quantum computers — which would be smaller and exponentially more powerful than modern computers, able to model complex phenomenon, rapidly crunch numbers, and render modern encryption keys useless — they would need quantum teleporters in order to be networked together in a quantum version of the Internet.
China plans to launch a satellite with a quantum teleportation experiment payload in 2016 and the European, Japanese, and Canadian space agencies are hoping to fund their own quantum teleportation satellite projects in the coming years.
How It works
The trick to teleportation comes from a quirk of quantum mechanics that allows you to create two particles that are completely in tune with one another, which are known as an entangled pair.
To send a controllable signal, you need quantum teleportation. This requires three subatomic particles, say photons. Two of the photons are entangled with one another, and the third contains the bit of information you want to send.
“Now we want to show that this kind of communication might be useful on a global scale,” said physicist Anton Zeilinger of the University of Vienna, who led the Austrian quantum-distance team. “The method of choice is to use quantum communication via satellite,” he added, since photons can’t travel very far in glass fiber without getting absorbed.
The Race to Space
Being able to do this quantum satellite teleportation would provide many new advantages, in particular the ability to create cryptographic keys for sensitive information that would be stored in subatomic particles. If anyone were to measure the particle, they would change its properties so spy agencies would always know if they’ve been hacked. Someday in the future, James Bond and MI6 could be passing secret codes back and forth on a teleported light beam through space.
With this in mind, “there are now a couple of research groups considering how to build a quantum payload suitable for a satellite,” said physicist Thomas Jennewein of the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada. “There’s basically a race going on to get into space first with a quantum satellite.”
The Chinese space agency has put $554 million toward funding five scientific satellites over the coming years, one of which will be used for quantum communication.
This is a new direction for China, which has in the past launched more than 100 satellites, but until now only one for dedicated scientific experiments. While the exact figure for the quantum communication project is unknown, it could be on the order of $50 to 100 million, estimated Zeilinger. This stands in contrast to Europe and Canada, which have invested an order of magnitude less for their projects.
Comments (6)
by Eldon Haris
Fantastic uses for entanglement and teleportation generally.
This wont happen in isolation but in the context of mushrooming technology developments.
Progressive techniques to quantum levels should enable whole people to be scanned, plotting their body’s minute internal trajectories, teleporting without loss of consciousness as in Star Trek.
Such combined advances may guarantee immortality as errors, as aging, are reversed by teleportation-like ‘baths’.
1. Idea.
2. Complex day dreams.
3. Engineering.
by Paul TREHIN
I think that the “planerary “cyborg” composed of billions of highly powerful personal computers linked via ever faster safer networks is going to leapfrog the famous “Singularity” by decades of years. Especially with this new technology called “international quantum teleportation ”
This hybrid intelligent system, that I called “planetary cyborg” has in fact already started to dominate the world, just like predicted by Ray Kurtzwail and Vernon Vinge, this technology evolution is now uncontrollable by human beings. The planetary Cyborg can and does already invent its own computing innovations, in a mode that no ones, even with the help of most powerfull machines can control anymore.
It creates new components and new functions at an allarming rate, which most specialists can’t control and these can even less be controlled by socio political human authorities, who by and large are almost totally ignorant about this evolution. Some, partly “aware” act lik osrtiches putting theit heads in the sand “Their answers being ususly “the future will provaide ne solutions” no one concentrating on trying to asses which solutions nor how they will impact human society or the planet as a whole.
It might be interesting to run a short survey to know who has ever heard about the concept of singularity? I have done an informal and non scientific test around my friends of the Data processing community , people who should at least have a vague idea on this subject. I have not found a single one capable to give a proper answer to the question: “Have you heard about the singularity point in data processing? And if yes, could you summarize what it is, just in a few sentences.
I should have recorded some of the ludicrous answers I received, just to show how far from the concept of singularity these answers were, remembering that I asked data processing specialists.. Imagin asking the question in the general public?
I agree with the comment made by nfordkrz on October 5, 2012
Why do we invest more on NFL games broadcasting than on such advanced research as international quantum teleportation
Perhaps the answer is to be found in antique litterature: to make populations happy and stable, gives them: “Panem and Circences” “Bread and Games”
The Roman empire, fell in large part, because of this short term requirement for immediate satistafction, at all levels of the Roman society. As far as I can see, today’s politicians and sociologists tend to act as the Roman empire high class, just trying to calm down populations by satisfying the most primitives and immediate pleasurable expectations of these populations., for example in FRance making proposals to reduce oil and Gaz prices at a time when oil scarcity is already becoming apparent, and air polution data is more and more allarming.
Do you think that a presidential canditade proposing to progresively hike the price of gas in view of making a smooth transition towards a necessarily scarcer and expensive oil production, would have the slightest chance to be elected?
One basic solution to all that is investing a lot more on educatoin, but that again will not be providing “immediate and personnal satisfaction, hence won’t be very “popular”
Yet how can “international quantum teleportation ” be explained in a way to create massive enthusiasm, somewhat like what happened with the APOLLO program. leading to more inotations in our day to day lives than any previous human endeavour.
by nfordkrz
I felt sad to read that worldwide, only “millions of dollars” are being invested in this technology. I recently read that tens of BILLIONS of dollars are spent just to broadcast NFL football games each year. The priorities we have…
by smb12321
Societies set their own priorities. As technology accelerates, more and more people will invest in these industries. All new things go through this stage…the first incarnation is somehow produced. Once the process / mechanism improves, people are eager to shovel money. It’s all a matter of publicity, achievement and balancing short and long-term goals.
by Gorden Russell
You don’t need to be James Bond to want secure communications. Quantum communications will keep criminal gangs from stealing your credit card numbers.
by Bri
I don’t understand why we’re talking about MI 6 and James Bond. What? You don’t think Felix Lighter is up to the task?